Here is possibly another way to look at it. About 40% of the corn grown in the US goes to producing ethanol for mixing with gasoline. If you travel to the big corn growing states of Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, you will see field after field of corn in the summer. There are also plenty of soybean fields, which are planted in alternate years to help the soil.
So, 40% of the corn goes to making ethanol. But ethanol is usually mixed to only a 10% percentage with gasoline. Biodiesel, from what I understand, is 100% biofuel. It takes more plant matter to make a 100% product, than only a 10% product, as is the case with ethanol.
The corn and soybeans used to be grown mostly for animal feed. Corn for carbohydrates and soybeans for protein (plus some carbohydrate). Shifting these major crops to producing biofuels leaves less for the livestock, so beef, pork, chicken, turkey…whatever, becomes more expensive. Now we are seeing these fake meat products appear in supermarkets and fast food restaurants. The fake meat is supposedly printed out on 3D printers or something.
Perhaps I was too subtle. The “explains things” was two-fold. 1. As stated, I don’t read those boards. 2. Going unstated, I stopped reading those boards because they aren’t worth reading.
Taken to a maximum, true. But the unplanted acreage due to farm crop supports varies between 7-10%, so there is a fair amount of room to plant for fuel without touching the crops that are used for feed stock (or human consumption.)
There’s certainly not enough of it for full replacement, obviously, but I find very few serious analysts who think that is even a remotely plausible possibility.
There are also ways to extract the necessary carbon from various waste streams. That seems to be a commonly overlooked source that doesn’t impact farm production.
Exxon was the last man standing, but last month… https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exxon-retreats-major-climate-effort-100025346.html
Viridos Inc., a biotech company based in La Jolla, California, that operated as the oil giant’s key technical partner since it began its algae push in 2009. With Exxon funding drying up and difficulty finding other backers, the biotech firm laid off 60% of its staff on Dec. 27, according to Viridos executives. The biotech company said it is still moving forward with algae research…
All told, the company spent more than $350 million dollars trying to develop biofuels from algae…
Dozens of companies have tried and failed. Shell, for instance, launched an algae biofuels joint venture in 2007 and then sold its stake four years later. Efforts by Chevron and BP didn’t yield big breakthroughs. Meanwhile, numerous startups, including Algenol and Sapphire Energy, pivoted away from biofuels to focus on turning algae into specialty products like cosmetics and pet-food additives.